This is the full reference photo that Dulcie will use to create her painting.

Bottom left corner

This is a blow-up of the bottom left corner of the reference photo.

Grid overlay

The grid system is also applied to the smaller portions of the reference photo.

Full painting in progress

you can see in the bottom left the beginning of the painting based on the reference photo.

Chinese Altar

This is one of the Altar paintings Dulcie mentions in the interview. It hangs in her studio above her paints and brushes.

Hello and welcome to the The Spark & The Art creativity podcast. Thank you for subscribing to our weekly podcast, where we alternate between interviews with creative folks from all different career levels and insight and inspiration episodes. All with the intention you’ll get what you need to get your creative projects started and, more importantly, finished.

I’m your host Tucker and this week is an interview with painter Dulcie Foo Fat.

As I’ve mentioned I work at a large communications company in Canada. The building I work in is filled with art. I’m talking fiiiiilled with art. The company has it’s own art curator on staff and every piece is lit and presented lovingly. Each meeting room is named after, and contains art from, an artist. The room we use most days is called the Foo Fat room. Inside the room and in the halls around the room are incredibly detailed yet somehow surreal paintings of what I’ve since learned are called groundscapes. I did a little research and found that the artist actually lives and still works in Calgary. My original idea was that I would invite her to her meeting room and do an interview but she invited me to her studio. Why would I turn that opportunity down?

Because it was in her studio I got the opportunity to see some work in progress and she showed me some of her reference photos and the grid system she uses to do her intricate work. She was gracious enough let me take a few photos so I could share them with you all. You can find them at the shownotes page at TheSparkAndTheArt.com/123 and you can see some of her work at her website DulcieFooFat.com (spell it out). Also, because it was in her studio I got to meet her cat. You also get to meet her because she nosed the recorder over at one point and was also ushered out of the room but returned again. It’s a very adventure filled episode.

In our conversation we talk about how she became an artist by default even though she was aiming to get into education. We talk about how crumbs of encouragement are all it takes to find a path. We talk about the importance having a supportive husband played in her success and at the end we talk about her daughters who I will most likely be also inviting on the podcast.

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Thanks for listening and remember: you won’t get the art without the work and you won’t do the work without the spark.